Susanna Moodie, Letters of a Lifetime
Susanna Strickland was born on December 6, 1803, in the village of Bungay, Suffolk, England. She was the sixth daughter of Elizabeth Homer and Thomas Strickland. She followed Eliza, Agnes, Sarah, Jane, and Catharine Parr (named after the sixth wife of Henry VIII). Born sickly, Susanna was quickly baptized at St. Mary’s Anglican Church, for her parents feared the worst. Her given name had a tragic connotation because the name recalled Susanna Butt, Thomas Strickland’s first wife, who had died while giving birth. Her brothers, Samuel and Thomas, followed, to complete the Strickland family.
For a child with a poetic temperament like Susanna, rural Suffolk was an ideal place to grow up in. Only a few kilometres away in the Lake District, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were leading the Romantic Movement with their Lyrical Ballads. First published in 1798, this volume would later influence Susanna deeply.
At three years old, Susanna played with her sister’s and brothers on the grounds of Stowe House, a Georgian manor Thomas Strickland rented in the Waveney Valley. The setting was Edenic: Susanna often ran to the stream and cupped her hands to drink the pure water, or pulled wild strawberries from the bushes to eat her fill of the sweet fruit.
She soon accompanied her father and her older sister Catharine to the Waveney River, which looped around the village of Bungay. Fly fishing was her father’s favourite sport: Susanna watched her father from the green bank as he waded into the water with his fly fishing pole. If only I were as pretty and sweet as Catharine, Susanna thought, as her father talked to her sister. If only I had the same long blond hair, and not these red curls that no comb can tame. Catharine was the favourite; everyone in the family knew that.
“Father,” Susanna cried out: “I’ve seen a crocodile.”
“Now, Susanna, be quiet. I must concentrate.”
Her father shook his head at his youngest daughter’s imaginative ploy and continued to fish. Susanna didn’t know how to be any different. She could only be herself. She was more like her brother Samuel than like Catharine, for whenever she saw a frog leap in the grass, she tried to catch it with her bare hands. She didn’t like her dolls; she wanted to keep a frog in her bedroom.
Susanna’s father hoped country living could heal his gout. The chronic disease inflamed the joints of his hands and feet and kept him in bed for weeks in excruciating pain.
Thomas Strickland was born in London and grew up in genteel poverty. He was ambitious, and as a teenager he found employment with a well-known London shipping company, Hallet and Wells. Thomas’s favourite mottoes, which he passed down to his children, were “God helps those who help themselves” and “Persevere and you must succeed.” He advanced quickly in the firm, became a manager, and eventually owned properties.
In 1808, when Susanna was five, Thomas had made enough money to purchase the attractive Elizabethan manor Reydon Hall, a country retreat located about one kilometre from the coast of the North Sea. Reydon Hall, with its many rooms and its mullioned windows to look out from, was where Susanna put down roots that tugged at her till the end of her life.
Thomas Strickland was ahead of his time: he believed that his daughters ought to be educated. Elizabeth gathered her girls in the parlour every day to teach them not only sewing and crafts, but history, mathematics, even Greek and Latin. Susanna, like all her sister’s, developed a passion for reading. In her father’s library, she took any book she liked, even those from the collection that had once belonged to Sir Isaac Newton, who had been the great-uncle of Thomas’s first wife. On winter evenings, the family gathered before the warming flames of the fireplace in the library and listened to Agnes, who adopted a very regal manner as she recited favourite passages from Shakespeare or her own compositions. By the time she was nine years old, Susanna was writing her own poems filled with gloom and grandeur as well as tragic plays with larger-than-life heroes like Napoleon.
One cold afternoon, despite their fears of Old Martin, the ghost the servants warned them against, Susanna and Catharine climbed to the attic garret. Now imaginative girls of twelve and thirteen, they had discovered an old trunk with brass hinges that was reputed to have belonged to an Indian prince.
“Let’s open it!” Susanna, her grey eyes flashing, coaxed her younger sister. “Maybe there will be clothes, or even jewels, to wear.”
They lifted the heavy wooden lid and found some-thing even more precious: paper – reams of paper – that expensive commodity they never had enough of for their scribblings.
“Let’s write a story right now,” Susanna suggested. “I have so many ideas.”
Catharine agreed. Close together in the dusty, dim place, they each started to write a story. At times, the silence was broken as they excitedly read passages to each other. Suddenly, Eliza, their eldest sister and the most severe, burst in on them:
“What are you two doing?” she asked sharply. After skimming a few pages, Eliza grumbled:
“This is trash!”
Susanna was so angry she picked up her manuscript and ran down the staircase to the nearest fireplace, where she threw the pages into the flames and watched, fuming, as they turned to ashes.
The Strickland children’s daily life was idyllic, except when their father’s gout worsened in the icy drafts of winter. Then Susanna and her sister’s and brothers had to obey the servants while their mother nursed their father in the bedroom. Only Agnes had permission to enter: she read the newspapers to Mr. Strickland, who wanted to keep informed about London politics. Susanna often stood outside the door to listen, wishing she, and not Agnes, were the one by his bedside.
In May 1818, Thomas Strickland died. His health had deteriorated after an unwise loan to a friend cost him most of his business. Reydon Hall was left to Mrs. Strickland, but there was very little capital to provide an income for the family and they could hardly afford food.
Susanna, fifteen years old, grieved the loss of her father, whom she later described as a “good and just man,” a “vigorous and independent thinker.” In the first few months after his death, she was haunted by memories of her childhood misbehaviour. She’d close her eyes and see her father seated at the head of the dining table. Her sister’s and brothers sat respectful and silent as Mr. Strickland announced in a bitter tone that Napoleon had escaped Elba. They all knew how he despised England’s enemy. But Susanna couldn’t help herself and let out a whoop of glee. Unlike her father, she admired Napoleon.
Why, Susanna asked herself now, did I do such a had thing? Why did I upset Father when he was not well?
She was impulsive by nature. Yet her family loved her warmth and generosity. How can I help Mother keep Reydon Hall? Susanna wondered.
A friend of the family had taken one of Catharine’s children’s stories to a London publisher. To their great surprise, the story had sold quickly. Susanna had an idea for a tale about another hero of hers, the Roman gladiator Spartacus, and his exploits.
Maybe I can sell a book too! Susanna hoped. And I might earn enough money to travel to London one day.
